Ail-Round Boy

On Buenos Aires newsstands last week, the newest and slickest magazine was a monthly called Argentina. Packed with pictures and color, it had a heavy concentration of anti-American articles. They discussed the iniquities of U.S. comic strips, the horrors of U.S. "boastfulness," and U.S. failure to recognize Argentine greatness. Argentina, aimed at the Argentine intelligentsia, carried little advertising. Its editor was Secretary of Education Oscar Ivanissevich, 53, onetime ambassador to the U.S.

In the eleven months since he returned from Washington, suave "Ivan" Ivanissevich has proved himself the most versatile of all the men around Peron. He had hardly settled down at home before he had a chance to add a couple of cubits to his considerable stature as a surgeon. Amid blaring Peronista publicity, he took out the President's appendix (TIME, March 15). From surgery he moved to culture, soon became the high priest and top philosopher of Peronism.

Good Food. Ivan never stoops to understatement in praising Peron and the regime. He once told a Buenos Aires rally: "When in Washington, far away from the fatherland, in the solitude of the embassy, I first read of the, rights of labor as propounded by our President, I was so moved that I instinctively and reverently stood up."

La Senora gets her share of praise, too. "Thanks to Senora Peron," he said recently, "more than 600,000 schoolchildren now have clothes, good food, books and games." As Secretary of Education, Ivan himself has shepherded 300,000 schoolchildren on "useful vacations" designed to get them better acquainted with their own country.

The recent election campaign drew from Serb-descended Ivan still further proof of his versatility. One night in Tucuman he dashed off a poem, declaimed it at a Peronista meeting. Set to lively music, it rapidly became the party's official song:

We Peronista boys

Fighting together

Will ever cry

With heartfelt joy

Viva Peron! Viva Peron!

A Bolero. Surgeon Ivanissevich is also a singer. Last month, traveling with the presidential party on a long, dusty train ride back to the capital from the interior, Evita Peron said: "Ivan, why don't you sing us a bolero?" The courtly, white-suited, white-tied Secretary dug out a guitar, swung into a popular number called Luna Lunera.

In his job as Secretary of Education, Ivan has charge of the making of a government film epic on the life of San Martin. Recently, he summoned Argentina's top movie actors to his office, assigned them roles. The one part left unfilled was that of the Liberator. The actors went away with a strong impression that Oscar Ivanissevich was saving it for himself.

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